Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.
Interpretation
This quote implies that the struggles and sacrifices of individuals give meaning to their achievements and honor.
Saint Ambrose emphasizes the importance of the trials and challenges faced by martyrs in defining their legacy and significance. Without these contests or struggles, their ultimate sacrifices would lack value, and the honor they receive as martyrs would diminish. This highlights a broader philosophical theme: achievements are often intertwined with the hardships faced, giving depth and meaning to the recognition received.
In practice
In a speech honoring veterans, one might invoke this quote to illustrate the significance of their sacrifices.
A good youth ought to have a fear of God, to be subject to his parents, to give honor to his elders, to preserve his purity; he ought not to despise humility, but should love forbearance and modesty. All these are an ornament to youthful years.
Where a man's heart is, there is his treasure also.
The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.
A kindness received should be returned with a freer hand.
It is ingrained in all living creatures, first of all, to preserve their own safety, to guard against what is harmful, to strive for what is advantageous.
The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.
Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. [speaking of George MacDonald]
Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.
The visible is always a mirror of the invisible. The reality is imagined before it manifests itself.
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